


the glove compartment (is inaccurately named)

by eternalgoldfish



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2019-10-07 08:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 12,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17362517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalgoldfish/pseuds/eternalgoldfish
Summary: When the early morning hours are cold and soft, sometimes Steve finds Billy’s half-open eyes in the moonlight and can’t help but touch his hand. They’re not friends. Steve thinks that maybe they could have been, before, if Billy had come to town and asked him to play some ball, asked him if he wanted to hang out some time. Billy hadn’t done that, so Steve doesn’t know what it means when Billy bundles Steve’s hand close to his chest and frowns like he’s got something to say. Steve knows he isn’t going to say it.A ficlet collection.





	1. (we're both in silence) wide eyed

**Author's Note:**

> I finally got my life together and decided to cross-post some of my drabbles, originally posted on tumblr, here.  
> I'll likely periodically update the drabbles as I write more, but they're technically all finished so I'm marking this collection as complete.  
> I hope you enjoy!

When the world crumbles once more, Steve and Billy sleep side by side, their mess of blankets mixing with Jonathan and Nancy’s on Joyce Byers living room floor. Dustin sleeps on Steve’s other side, within arms reach of Lucas and Max, and Steve stares at the roof some nights, wondering how their parents are, whether or not little Erica Sinclair sleeping in the armchair will ever see her mother again.

Hawkins is in chaos. The secret is out, too big to be contained or explained, monsters ripping through Indiana with abandon while the party works out a plan. They have the girl, they know the truths, but it feels like they have nothing.

When the early morning hours are cold and soft, sometimes Steve finds Billy’s half-open eyes in the moonlight and can’t help but touch his hand. They’re not friends. Steve thinks that maybe they could have been, before, if Billy had come to town and asked him to play some ball, asked him if he wanted to hang out some time. Billy hadn’t done that, so Steve doesn’t know what it means when Billy bundles Steve’s hand close to his chest and frowns like he’s got something to say. Steve knows he isn’t going to say it.

Some nights Steve wakes to Billy running a hand down his back, wide awake, with Steve’s leg thrown over Billy’s waist and his face in Billy’s neck, and Steve _knows_ on some level that his embarrassment is stupid, but comfort makes hims clumsy, and he spends most of his days walking through mucky woods with his bat and a gun. Billy frowns like he knows.

Billy doesn’t sleep much at night. Sometimes he gets up and walks along the veranda, sometimes Steve hears him moving about in the bathroom or kitchen. Sometimes Steve opens his eyes and Billy is just there, bottom lip stuck between his teeth as he presses Steve’s forehead to his collarbone.

Layered in moth eaten comforters and Billy’s arms, Steve feels like he’s taken something Billy never offered, like he’s stolen something important, but Billy never says a thing. Billy frowns and presses his mouth to Steve’s temple, and in the morning he throws shoes at Dustin and smokes with Joyce, argues with Hopper about the best ways to kill demodogs. He calls Max _Maxine_ and tells Will he needs to grow a thicker skin, but he doesn’t call Steve _pretty boy_ anymore, doesn’t call him anything.

In the morning, they hardly speak, and Steve doesn’t know what that means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sort of.  
> I know all of this is recycled, but as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this or any of the other stories.  
> I love you all, and thank you for reading.  
> Song is "Candles" by Daughter.


	2. i found a home in your eyes (we'll never be apart)

Billy shakes baby teeth on to the gravel, tries not to think about the way Mrs. Harrington will look at him if she finds out he’s stolen them from her vanity, how she looks at everything a little vacant now, a little sad. He doesn’t know her well, but he knows she drinks jasmine tea every morning and chardonnay every night. Steve always smells like clean green tea and white wine when his mother is home. Billy knocks the last tooth out of his plastic bag.

Under a full moon he runs his fingers over the jagged rocks and spreads the teeth wide, before sprinkling the earth with lavender, jasmine and sage. Other kids left Bradley’s Big Buy with drooping masks and bulk candy while Billy shelled out the last of his pennies for a pack of smokes he’s still too young for and a plastic pumpkin filled with tea light candles and packets of spices. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and smears dirt on his nose. The quarry watches. The forest looms.

“Of course.” Billy laughs when he reaches for his lighter and grasps something else, but it’s a bitter, aching sound. He sets the candles up like he remembers from old books then hesitates, lets his thumb linger a little too long on the initials he knows are carved into the metal lighter, into his skin.  _S.H._  The contact burns.

At night, the white rocks of the quarry bask in the glow of the open moon, drink her milk and honey. Billy’s muscles feel too taut to loop around his bones. Under the moon, he shakes.

“Billy?” The wind asks.

“Steve?”

The earth sighs like Steve’s shoulders. Gravel bites into Billy’s knees. “Fucking took you long enough,” he says.

“How did you find me?”

“Books.”

Autumn leaves roll behind him like laughter, like they know he doesn’t read. Didn’t read. He reaches forward and drips candle wax on baby teeth because sometimes people _change_ , sometimes Billy looks at his mother’s decaying heirlooms and quakes, sometimes he feels like her magic is leaving his body.

“Are you going to show, or what? I don’t have all night, pretty boy. Not all of us are working with eternity here.”

Steve grasps Billy’s hands with shimmery barely-there palms and presses close-mouthed kisses to his tendons. Billy can see through Steve’s eyelids but kisses his brow anyway, like he can’t see the moonlight as it passes through Steve’s throat.

“Am I dead?” Steve asks. 

Billy has never been to a funeral with so many finger-sandwiches and pressed flowers. He licks his lips and says, “Not for long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Daniel" by Bat For Lashes.


	3. tannins

Steve is ten when he starts to see patterns swirling at the bottom of tea cups, bits and pieces of loose leaf tea that escape the strainer when his grandmother tips the pot into his delicate pink china cup with gold embroidery. She always gives him the same cup, but he wants the one that is white on the outside, deep olive on the inside, decorated with sweeping silver crows. He’s too young for tea, too brash, but she fills his cup and sits in her old chair and seats him across from her on her dipping floral couch with a glint in her eye that always makes him feel like she knows something, makes him feel dizzy.

His tea leaves shape like falling crows, monster teeth, chrysanthemums in early frost. A dagger that makes him think of a girl in his class, a girl he thinks of fondly, a rose with many thorns. Two different dragons. A large dog.

He’s twelve and runs his hands along the slats of every fence he passes, lets the pads of his fingers linger a little too long on the aged knots and rings of dead ceder and oak. There is something he understands.

He’s fourteen and fall tree leaves remind him of spinning dizzy and eleven, closing his eyes as he lay in dry red-orange piles in the forest and felt the world turn until his body, made him feel like he knew things he couldn’t. Now, he knows things he can’t, sees them before they happen if he thinks real hard and runs his hands over rough bark, holds his breath over his cups, closes his eyes in candlelight. His grandmother is dead but his mother inherited her china, uses it for her morning tea.  

He’s sixteen and plays basketball for the rush, the way it leaves him breathless, the way all sports seem to shake something in his chest, make him feel clear. The weight of a basketball or a baseball bat give him something solid to squeeze between his palms. He knows which team will win, knows it the way he knows which girls will let him kiss them, and tries not to let the losses burn before they happen, tries to ignore the feeling of knowledge he’d rather tuck away.

He’s seventeen and Nancy Wheeler is who he sees in his dreams, bottom lip pink, eyes sparkling, defiantly clicking back at the monsters at her heels, an image he thinks must be a metaphor, but he feels it sinister in his blood, sees more dragons in his cups, senses vines crawling up his throat when he sleeps and filling his teacups with dense, chaotic black. There are no insights when he looks, just something unknown, something that plasters all over the inside of his white cup with an olive green inside, decorated with swooping silver crows.

He meets monsters and understands. He meets them because he feels bad, has a feeling, knows things he shouldn’t, knows Nancy feels things for Jonathan from the way she now holds Steve’s hand. He can feel something pulsing in her blood. He tastes bitter tannins, fights for her life anyway.

He’s eighteen and lets betrayal sting him for all his knowledge. He knew her love would be bad. It’s worse.

His dreams have long begun to fill with large dogs and the crunching of fall leaves. Behind closed eyes he sees mean blue eyes and dripping jowls, feels hot breath on his neck.

A Camaro careened into the parking lot one morning, weeks ago, and spat out a boy that reminded Steve of petrichor, the clean shake after lightning in a storm.

Billy’s mouth is mean. His fists are worse. Steve sees bruising on his hands when he runs his fingertips over the fences when he walks at night. He sees split lips and feels the ghost of a hot mouth.

He’s nineteen when he runs his hands over Billy’s arms, scrapes his nails over cold flesh and goosebumps. Their feet stumble in the damp red-orange underbrush of fallen leaves and mid-autumn dew as Billy pushes him back into an old oak and bites his words silent, paws at his waist and huffs hot on his neck.

Steve runs one hand over rigid bark and slides the other under Billy’s hitched-up sweater and feels nothing but open mouths, nothing but warmth.


	4. (where's my comfort in the) undefined

Billy’s mom wasn’t lovely, she jumped ship when he was seven, was too tired from working sixty hours a week at diners and laundromats to put up with her whip-tempered husband and snotty son who did badly in school and cried to much. She had always wanted to move to another city, hated the price of living in LA that forced her to work so much, even with a husband who had a respectable nine to five job, earned a salary that should have let her be a stay at home mom. 

Maybe she would have liked her son more if she’d got to spend time with him while he was still in diapers. Maybe he would have cried less if he wasn’t raised by the Italian woman down the street who only charged five dollars a day for full-time daycare because she had a large heart and felt bad for little Billy Hargrove who never really got along with the other kids, never really understood how to play fair or share his blocks or not push the other little kids off the swing set in her backyard when he wanted a turn.

Billy didn’t really know. His mother tugged him around by the wrist in 24-hour grocery stores at ten thirty at night and made up for his aching shoulder by letting him buy a gum ball on the way out. He sometimes wondered if that’s why he graduated from gumballs to cigarettes by the time he was ten, too used to stopping ache by putting something in his mouth.

His mother wasn’t lovely. She left with her bags half packed and her husband screaming in the doorway, telling her she was useless, that she’d come back. She didn’t come back. She said fuck you, flipped him off, left in her busted lemon of a car and sped through the early afternoon so fast that Billy mostly remembered the screech her tires made as she flew around the first corner, mostly remembered that she hadn’t said goodbye, hadn’t said I love you.

Before she left, she smashed all the plates in the kitchen, smashed the glass table in their living room that was really the only nice piece of furniture that they owned. Billy smashed the mirror in the bathroom that night. His father smashed the television.

Billy was seven and spent the night with shaking shoulders, cleaning up all the glass in the house with a broom, wondering if they would have to move, wondering who would look after him without the kind woman down the street.

He knew he was rotten, didn’t really know how to be any different. It was just in his blood, his anger, his mean streak. He didn’t like other kids, didn’t really care to learn how, as long as he could trick them into playing with him, into going along with his plans.

When his dad met his second wife she was kind, but meek. She let her husband do what he wanted, never tried to be Billy’s mother. They lived in a small, run down apartment in the heart of Cali where she could work at the bodega down the road and bring tequila home late at night.

Billy was twelve and learned to love tequila. Learned to love the things that burned him.

Susan was wife three. She came with a daughter, made their little family into the most nuclear thing Billy had had in a long time. She cared, but in small ways, like slipping him lunch money and leaving records on his bed.

She didn’t stop his father’s violence, never kept him from hitting Billy, didn’t fuss when Billy got expelled from school and Max got caught for petty theft and his father said, that’s it, we’re moving.

Susan was the closest thing to lovely, but Susan wasn’t shit. Susan wasn’t his mother, maybe didn’t know how to be.

Billy was almost eighteen and had learned to love the things that burned, accepted he smashed glass glass for fun and made rain from beer bottles when his heart got a little heavy, a little bitter. He smashed faces when he lost the things he loved. He smashed Steve Harrington’s face. He smashed what he thought might be lovely.

And Steve? Steve was lovely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "The Lines" by Beartooth.


	5. be careful how you live and breathe

**i.**

The dog door is flipped the wrong way again, the dog door for for the dog Billy’s family has never owned, that the previous family decided to install in the seventies that never really worked right. Water squelches between Billy’s toes as he steps over the drenched mat at the back door, wondering what could have knocked the flap in to welcome the rain.

“Max, do you copy?” he hears, a familiar, masculine voice crackling from the kitchen table. Max’s walkie-talkie lies face down between an abandoned bowl of cereal and some loose newspaper clippings.

“Max. Max?”

“She’s not here,” Billy says, holding the device to his mouth as he leans against the table, wet feet sliding a little on the linoleum tiles.

For a moment, there is only silence. Then, slowly, the voice asks, “Billy? Are you alone?”

“Why?”

“Billy,” the voice says, slowly, “This is Steve. Steve Harrington?”

Billy knew the voice was familiar, should have been able to recognize it through some paper cups attached by a string, with how many times he’s heard it on the basketball court or in the hallways or in his dreams. Not that his dreams are about Steve, not beyond his cheekbones beneath Billy’s fists in the Byers’ kitchen. 

“Okay? This is the second time you’re trying to hang out with my kid sister, dude. That’s fucking weird.”

“Billy,” Steve tries again. “Listen, if Max is gone, you need to get out of there.”

Billy laughs. Rain hits the windows, rattles the back door, insulates the house from the rest of the world in a way that makes his laughter bounce around the house and linger in the walls.

“Why?” He asks, because he knows what the scariest things in his house are. He greets them every morning and asks them if they want to read the newspaper with their coffee, tries to make sure Max is home in time to smile at them over dinner.

“You don’t understand,” Steve says. “I don’t have time to explain. You need to run.”

Something chitters under the table, breath on Billy’s ankles. There isn’t just rain tracked across the floor in Billy’s footprints, there’s blood.

“What?”

Thunder cracks. Billy nearly trips as he backs away from the table and slams into the kitchen cabinets, the chittering between the dining chairs growing louder. There’s a shock of lightning and under the tablecloth, where there should be darkness, there are teeth, teeth, teeth. 

“Billy,” Steve says, “ _Run.”_

 

**ii.**

****

Billy’s been running since he was a kid, feet tripping along cracked California sidewalks in his beat up running shoes, suffering the dry summer heat as he sweat at midnight. Hawkins is not dry. The air is thick with humidity as he books it out of his house, walkie-talkie clutched tightly in one hand and his car keys in the other, too aware of the high-pitched chattering of the creature on his heels, of Steve Harrington’s voice buzzing and cracking as he calls Billy’s name over the device in his hand, begs him to run, like Billy doesn’t have that self-preservation crusted under his fingernails.

The gravel is slick with rain, makes his bare feet slip out from under him. He hardly catching his footing as thunder claps above his head and lightning shocks the world bright-white, startling the creature breathing hotter than the air, hotter than Billy’s skin. His keys fall between his fingers as he fumbles for the right one.

“Billy? Billy! You better not fucking be dead, Hargrove. You better be fucking running.”

And Billy is. He looses his footing half a foot to his car and hits the metal elbow-first in a way he knows will bruise deep, makes him swear and hiss and see stars on impact.

The rain rattles the trees, nearly hides the hissing and footfalls behind him as the thunder clatters with his heart beating in his ears.

“I don’t want to burry you. I hardly know you. God,  _Billy_.”

Steve is screaming so hard that the walkie-talkie cracks and whines in the middle, misses words when he roars too close to the receiver. Billy gets the right key in hand as the beast leaps for his shoulders. He’s got the door half-closed when it hits the side of the door with a harsh thump and bounces back into the gravel.

Billy runs like he’s never run when the monster that lives in his house bellows from the glassed in porch that he better  _never fucking come back,_ even though it calls the police to report him missing in the morning, to haul him back home with a bruised cheek and the memory of a hand hitting too-sharp on his cheekbone.

“Billy? Run. Run _. Run.”_

He tries the ignition twice as AC/DC blares over the ran, shocks him with familiarity that’s wrong in the dark, wrong as the toothy four-leafed maw spits cries and shakes it’s body. He hits the gas and flies down the road, can no longer hear Harrington as he misses the knobs on his radio to stop the sound, to hear the things gnashing in the rain.

“Billy,” Steve says. “ _Billy.”_

Billy fights for the walkie-talkie in his passenger seat, almost throws it down into the well at his feet as he keeps his eyes on the road a veers in and out of his lane. He almost hits himself in the face when he brings it to his mouth, breath so harsh he almost chokes when he says, “Steve.”

“Oh god, oh fuck, Billy.”

“Where are you?”

“A cabin. A cabin near Jameson, off the road by the fallen oak, straight out. You’ll have to go on foot.”

“Christ. Of course.”

He whips down back roads until the pavement disappears, until all he sees are skeleton trees even in the hot summer, even in the air that makes him feel like his meat will peel off his bones like tender beef ribs.

“Billy,” Steve still gasps sometimes. “Billy.”

He hits the gas hard when he sees the fallen tree, nearly spins out until his tires fall into the ditch along the side of the road. He scrambles for the door, hands still slick with rain water and sweat, maybe blood from the deep gash on his elbow from where the skin split on impact.

“Billy,” Steve says as Billy’s bare feet stumble on twigs, rocks, and the leaves from the few living trees bracketing the road like phantom limbs. He thinks there is new blood between his toes, hisses as the ground breaks his skin.

Something is rolling through the woods, something that screams and chitters in the night just over the roar of the rain, the crack of thunder.

“ _Run_ ,” Steve begs.

And Billy doesn’t need to be told again. He fucking runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a drabble that had a part one and a part two so I slapped them together for convenience.  
> Song is "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.


	6. (i've grown into the ground, and) there are branches in my bones

Billy misses foggy summer afternoons when winter sets in, longs for those days he can sit in his office, biting his nail as he looks around his computer monitor at the still lake. It’s 1992, six years since he moved to this sleepy cabin in the woods, still stuck in Indiana but with a new appreciation for the cold and for the forest.

The Upside Down has been quiet for five years, long enough for him to feel safe in the dark, if not a little shaky in the blackest of nights. Steve visits and chops wood when his apartment two towns over feels too cramped. He says he’s saving for a house in the hills, but Billy knows he’ll never do it. Steve doesn’t like to be alone. Even when he has a girlfriend, Billy sees the shadows under his eyes, knows that ache.

It’s hard for others to understand the unknowable, the things that came before their new peace, the things that can no longer be spoken of. Billy pays the bills with horror novels written in foggy summer mornings and midday winter storms. He has a fire place he never uses. He lets Steve string his house with old Christmas lights, helps him meticulously replace every burnt out bulb that shorts out the whole string.

Max spends her breaks from college in his guest room and clutches cocoa on his couch, smiling soft as he begrudgingly hosts Christmas dinners for his unthankful parents. Steve has attended three over the years,  _his parents are on a vacation and he’s single again_ , as Billy tells his parents, and it’s true, but his father never stops looking at Steve like he’s a creature from one of Billy’s books, like he’s done something to tarnish this house.

Sometimes, Billy wishes these accusations are true. Sometimes, when there is no girlfriend living in his cabin, filling his kitchen with spice-smells and his shower with fruity shampoo, he wonders how it would feel if Steve weren’t in the guest room across the hall. Would Steve mind if he walked across the soft running carpet in the hallway and sunk into Steve’s sheets? Sometimes he wonders if Steve would come with him on holiday.

In the summer, Steve sits with Billy on his back porch and slowly sips beer as they stare out across the lake, evening setting over the water as mosquitoes tickle their ears. Billy misses that warmth, wishes he’d taken Steve’s hand one of those times, kissed the tendons and blue veins. 

It’s nearly Christmas, and Steve sits in the armchair by Billy’s computer desk and sips tea with his other hand in his hair as he slowly flips through a comic book Max left on her last visit. He has never read Billy’s books, but he likes to watch him work, or so he claims. Steve doesn’t like things that go bump in the dark. Billy doesn’t blame him.

Billy leans around his monitor and watches the snow before asking, “This might be fucking stupid, but would you kiss me?”

Steve pauses halfway through flipping the page, mouth slowly opening and then closing. “Would you punch me in the face after?”

“Shut up,” Billy saves his document, shoulders raising to his ears. “Forget I said anything.” As if that were an option with the heat growing from his neck.

Steve sets his comic to the side and cautiously stands, putting his hands on Billy’s shoulders over the back of his office chair. He runs his thumb over the hot skin at the neck of Billy’s sweater. With a deep breath, he dips down to kiss Billy’s cheek, murmurs, “Your dad already thinks I do.”

Billy stiffens and asks, “Will he be right this Christmas?”

The chair squeaks as Steve turns it, meeting Billy’s eyes when they’re face to face, mouth set and serious. “If you want him to be?”

And Billy wants those smooth lake mornings, wants to watch Steve hold coffee as he watches the ducks on the not-yet-frozen winter waters. He says, “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Wisteria" by Hands Like Houses.


	7. what an expensive fate

Steve’s not the kind of rich where people want his money, just his time, just his arm around their shoulders when they sip warm beers at the quarry and laugh, because he’s got the right clothes and the right car, enough allowance to buy the expensive chocolates at Melvald’s General Store.

Steve’s not the kind of pretty girls will die for, but he’s got those dimples, that hair, the soft freckles that dot his face and dust his back. He’s the best choice in Hawkins, expensive with warm eyes and presumptuous murmurs.  _Maybe we could hang out some time, I could get you some beers, you know, you might like that._

Billy’s not the kind of guy who can be bought, so that’s not what it is. That’s not his plan. But Steve wants to swim in lover’s lake at night under the moon and the Camaro’s headlights and wants to lie on the bank, chest heaving in the humid summer air. He wants to lose something, Billy can tell, wants to shake something off, or he wouldn’t be asking Billy around, wouldn’t have dark bags under his eyes as he murmurs things like,  _Think I forgot my cigarettes, dumb guy like me, you got a some?_

Billy’s the kind of guy who can read a room, can tell who is boss, and when he presses Steve in to the ground and kisses him as cicadas buzz and mosquitoes nip, he knows Steve will give him anything. He traces the freckles on Steve’s stomach, listens to Bon Jovi, kisses his neck. Feels fated for something.

Steve steals the good liquor from his father, buys Billy a Walkman for his birthday, moans deep in his ear, shows his expensive tastes. He’s boring, shudders in the dark, jumps at his shadow, but draws pictures on Billy’s back when they’re alone, gives him chocolates, rich and dark.

Billy doesn’t plan to stay in Hawkins, doesn’t think he has a heart, but Steve melts on his tongue, fills his cup to the brim, is sloppy, makes mistakes, gives Billy anything–and how is Billy not to take?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Bellyache" by Billy Eilish.


	8. (i found the cure to growing older) you're the only place that feels like home

There are lots of places to hide in Hawkins– hollowed out trees, rolling forests, darkened bathroom stalls in mom and pop coffee shops that have seen bitter patrons and better days. Billy knows this, but always hides in the worst places, tries to hide in the light with a tight smile and his fast car.

Sometimes he thinks people can tell. Sometimes he thinks they know he fakes everything.

Steve Harrington isn’t something Billy has to fake. He can own Steve,  _become_  Steve, take his friends, his title, his team, his town. He could get Wheeler, if he really wanted. He could adopt the brats.

(Not that he wants to. Max is annoying, always going on about  _arcades_ and  _skateboards_ and  _boyfriends_  like they fucking mean anything. Boyfriends mean nothing. All boys are ruthless. Billy knows, all he does is take and take and take, well versed in never giving back.)

Billy can put himself on the top of the food chain easily. He just needs some hair spray and some tight pants, a cat’s smile, a vicious laugh. He doesn’t need people, exactly, but they shield him like penguins in an Arctic field, block him from view, give him warmth.

(He thinks of Steve’s back pressed to his chest and the quick pants of his breath. He thinks of Steve as  _owned_ as  _his,_  like it even means something. Billy’s never really owned anything, but he takes and he takes and he takes.)

There’s one place he can’t hide, he learns, one place that leaves him bare, breath short and mind spinning. Those eyes catch him open-mouthed and stripped. Steve finds him in the lush woods of Hawkins, in the rare back alleys. Steve finds him everywhere, unplanned.

In the school showers, three hours after close, he finds Steve rubbing his jaw. There’s black blood on his hands and a cut on his cheek that stretches when he purses his lips. Billy wants to ask  _why,_  but then Steve will ask why he’s there, will want to know about the hand-shaped bruise around his bicep and the lashes on his thighs. Billy will have to explain how fucking belts work, and he’s too tired, too raw.

He licks his lips and nods at Steve, feels breathless as Steve touches his waist, first hesitant and then hard, rests his head on Billy’s shoulder like he owns Billy, like maybe it could  _mean_  something, except it doesn’t fucking make sense, they’re not  _friends_ , but maybe Billy doesn’t want to be. He just takes and he takes and he takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" by Fall Out Boy.


	9. let me crawl inside your veins (give you a ball and chain)

Laurie’s got some of the nicest tits Billy has ever seen. It’s an actual goddamn shame that she has to keep them tucked snugly under her sweater, warm and away from the chilly February air. Not that Billy would touch them, not lately, but his mind is still allowed to wander. He can still think about what they would feel like under his palms, how they feel now rubbing against his arm as she takes his hand between both of her own and leans in, maybe peppers his face with kisses.

“Hi, can I help you?” Steve asks, leaning around Billy.

Laurie shrugs and crosses her arms. She holds them tight to her chest to push her breasts out and pops her gum like a fucking professional. “Can I sit with you guys? Becky and Amy went on some stupid walk, but it’s too cold for that shit.”

“Amen,” Billy says as he kicks the cafeteria chair across from his out from under the table.

“Christ,” Steve mutters into his pudding cup.

Billy glances between Steve and Laurie, lets his tongue loll slowly over his bottom lip as he meets Steve’s rolling eyes. Steve slams the pudding cup down on Billy’s tray and throws the spoon after it and Billy knows he’s won this round, but it’s not enough, not yet.

He takes a mouthful of pudding as he eyes Laurie up and down, lets his eyes linger over the tiny gold cross nestled between her breasts. Her sweater is pink like Steve’s long sleeved polo, but hers dips low, so low it’s a wonder her bra doesn’t peek out, and she’s exactly who he would have gone for  _before_.

“Stevie?” Laurie asks. “Could you go get me a cookie? I’ll give you a dollar to grab two, one for me and one for you?”

Steve glances over his shoulder like maybe he’s thinking about it, but Billy can see his jaw working and the slight pinch of his eyebrows. Steve says to her, “You couldn’t have bought it before you sat down?”

“I only realized I wanted it now.”

“Oh yeah?” He points over his shoulder. “Weird, it’s still close enough for you to walk.”

With her teeth grit, Laurie’s pretty face is all harsh lines and strawberry chapstick. She’ll have crowsfeet by twenty-eight. “Steve,” She says, like Steve is slow, like she didn’t spend half of the tenth grade dangling off his arm and calling him darling. “Please go get me a cookie.”

Steve steals Billy’s spoon from between his twisting teeth. “Fine,” he says, before throwing the spoon on the table and shoving his hand out for the cash.

Laurie, to her credit, doesn’t look offended, just hands over the money and pats Steve’s palm like maybe that outburst never happened. Once he’s across the cafeteria, Laurie turns to Billy with a serpent smile and says, “He’s such a fucking weirdo. Do you want to ditch next period and smoke with me? I forgot my lighter and English is like, the worst fucking class, total drag. I’m never going to use it, anyway.”

Billy looks between the lunch line and Laurie’s cheap mascara, and honestly, he likes English, but he likes making out a lot more.

It’s cold as fuck, Laurie was right, but she doesn’t seem to care now that she’s got his jacket draped over her shoulders and a cigarette held tightly between two fingers. Billy kind of wishes he’d gotten to finish Steve’s pudding cup, because literally any food would be helping keep him warm, but he leans into the metal support beam of the bleachers and lets the smoke in his lungs warm him from the inside out.

“Hey,” Someone calls across the field.

Laurie groans and turns around. “Fuck off, Steve. Can’t you see we’re busy?” She pulls Billy’s jacket tighter around her shoulders and taps the ash from her cigarette into the wind.

“Yeah, we’re busy,” Billy calls.

Steve comes stomping around the side of the structure, something Billy can’t name in his eyes, something that makes Steve look positively wild, and smoke trips in Billy’s throat, causes him to choke like a fucking twelve year old because he’s seen Steve make a lot of faces before but never  _that_  one.

The vicious wind tangles Laurie’s ponytail as she crosses one arm over her chest. Billy is expecting her to snap, or maybe for Steve to tell her to get lost. What he isn’t expecting is for Steve to slap two plastic baggies filled with slightly crumbling chocolate-chip cookies into Laurie’s chest like it’s fucking football and they’ve got six seconds to make the pass.

“What–” Laurie asks.

“I bought both but realized I didn’t want one,” he says. “Are you smoking? Cool, I was thinking I could use one myself.”

“Steve–” Laurie tries, but Steve is already shaking one out and shoving it between his teeth. Crazed laughter burbles in Billy’s chest. It’s almost too windy to light.

“Laurie,” Steve says.

“Steve, fuck off, seriously, you weren’t like, invited.”

“Nah, nah,” Steve says, waving his hand. “You broke up my lunch for this, it must be something important.”

Laurie looks at Billy with her eyebrows up, mouth pursed. Billy licks his lips and shrugs. “So like,” he tilts his head to the side, shoots Laurie some bedroom eyes. “Were we going to talk about fucking, or like, was this a date thing?”

“It’s an I’m telling your boyfriend you were here thing,” Steve says, sharp, before Laurie can even open her candy coated mouth.

“That’s not fair–”

“It’s not?” Steve asks. Laurie’s cheeks are as read as her hair. Billy’s pretty sure her whole soul is on fire.

“Fuck you. Fuck both of you.”

“Hey,” Billy calls to her retreating back, “I tried!”

Steve shoves Billy’s hips into the bathroom sink hard enough that Billy’s starting to wonder if Steve actually is a football player sometimes. He’s going to ask, but Steve doesn’t give him time, already climbing up in Billy’s space with bared teeth and trust issues. “You were going to fuck her?” he asks.

Billy places his palms on Steve’s chest and shakes his head.  “Babe, no,” he half-promises, throws in a wink for good measure. “Just like, a little necking.”

“Fucking Christ,” Steve mutters, but he hasn’t backed away. If anything, he’s pressing closer to Billy and locking their hips, ironing together every line of their bodies. “She’s a shitty lay. And a bitch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve promises, lips by Billy’s ear. “You’re such a fucking bag of dicks. I can’t believe you’d do that. Now I’ve got to key some bitch’s car, and like, she’s my ex, too, that’s fucked, why’d you have to do that?”

Steve whines low like he does when he’s telling Billy something tender, like he wants him to know a secret.  It’s grating, unsexy, dominant.

Billy has never been so turned on.

“I don’t know, seemed like you were ignoring me,” Billy says, like he didn’t leave an open Shakespeare play on the cafeteria table, half-read with Steve’s abandoned North American Geography textbook.

“I’m sorry I’ve spoiled you and you’ve forgot how to use your fucking left hand,” Steve hisses.

Steve’s eyes are liquid gold, burning and glorious, molten in a way that scares Billy, in a way that makes him think maybe this was a bad idea, except—he kisses the cut above Steve’s upper lip and says, “But baby, why would I when I have yours?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Hostage" by Billie Eilish.


	10. intermission

When Steve moves to the city he rents a small bachelor apartment above a splintering liquor store. The floors and walls are thin and he can hear the TV downstairs clearly, can make out the shopkeeper murmuring for ID and jangling change. Steve smokes out front of the shop for hours and listens to the TV he’s too broke to afford.

When Billy moves to the city it’s with a black eye and a phone book, his Camaro and a fat lip. He calls Steve because he only knows Steve, knows they’ve never been friends, but has his phone number and address written on the inside flap of the book in Max’s messy writing.

Steve doesn’t know what he’ll do with a book of Hawkins phone numbers, but he looks at the ache in Billy’s eyes, the set of his shoulders, and tells Billy to put the phone book on the island counter, tells him to get some sleep.

Billy thinks he must be dreaming, almost asks when he curls up next to Steve on the mattress on his floor, their hands nearly brushing as Billy looks up to the drowned city stars through Steve’s broken curtains.

Steve can hear the TV downstairs even with his ear pressed in to his pillow. He traces a slow line down Billy’s finger, frowns, and listens to the shopkeeper murmur for change.


	11. i'll do whatever you say to me in the dark

Steve and Billy sit in the dark forest, back to back, and shred grass between their fingers.  _He loves me, he loves me not._  But Billy’s not sure who his grass is for, not entirely, and Steve’s never really let go of Nancy, isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to when he sees her every day, even with Billy’s warm spine aligned with his own, bending between his bones.

_He loves me, he loves me not._

Billy leans his head back enough that his curls tickle Steve’s neck. Steve’s mother made him get a haircut when he told her about Nancy. She said that brushing off the old made way for the knew, but Steve feels the loss of his hair like shredding grass. Billy’s hair is itchy but feels like home.

“Why did you bring me here?” Steve asks.

Billy shrugs and rubs his fingers together. They’re stained dark under the moonlight, covered with grass that looks like blood.  _He loves me, he loves me not._  “Thought it would be a cool spot to drink.”

“Yeah, but we’re not.”

Billy lets his skull bump Steve’s, likes the warmth of another mind so close. “Thought I could apologize for your face.”

“You’re fucking kidding.”

_He loves me, he loves me not.  
_

“I’m not. There’s beers in the car.”

“Yeah, but you fucking  _left_  them in the car.”

“Steve,” Billy says.

“Billy,” Steve says.

“I’m going to turn around.”

Steve takes a deep breath and tugs on the grass in his hands, lets pieces rain and flutter. “Don’t.”

But Billy does, shuffles until his legs and arm trap Steve while Steve squeezes his eyes shut, doesn’t lean back until Billy is breathing hot in his ear.  _He loves me, he loves me not._

“This isn’t beer.”

“No,” Billy says. “Can I kiss you?” he says.

And Steve’s not sure who his grass is for anymore, never really was, but likes Billy’s hot breath on the short hairs that don’t reach his spine, likes Billy’s fingers in his ribs.

“Yes,” Steve says.

_Loves me not._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I named two fics in this after "Candles" by Daughter. They actually have no relation.


	12. leave (your bag of bones)

The day Billy leaves he dyes his hair jet black, cuts it short so it softly curls around his ears. His parents don’t know he’s leaving, he just cuts and runs, hoping he can make it to a place where no one he knows will know his name, where the people who might won’t recognize a young man with dark hair and a scar above his eyebrow from his father’s new wedding ring.

He makes it to the first big city and dyes his hair in a motel bathroom. He’s new to dye, so he gets it all over the bathroom sink, the floor, and his neck. He drops some on his shirt, but that’s fine, he’s throwing out that white shirt anyway, can’t keep it with all the bloodstains down the middle.

The drive to the next big city is sharp and fast. He rushes down back roads with the wind in his choppy hair and wonders how easy it would be to get new license plates. Do landlords take deposits in cash? He stole everything from his father’s safe, money, jewelry, a hand gun. He doesn’t have a lot else to his name, just clothes and records, mostly.

When he finds the next motel he lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling until he simply can’t. He walks circles around the neighbourhood with the piece tucked into the back of his jeans, just in case, and walks and walks until it’s so late that bugs have gone to sleep and his feet feel like they’re bleeding.

He makes it back to his motel and sits at the small desk in the corner and picks up the phone, foot bouncing as he calls one of the only numbers he knows.

“I’ve left Hawkins,” he says the second the line clicks on the other end.

There’s a pause and a rush of breath. Then Steve says, “Billy.”

“Hi,” Billy says. 

“Where are you?”

“I probably shouldn’t say.”

“Jesus, Billy, what did you do?”

Billy shrugs and says, “Nothing,” because it’s true. “My dad’ll be looking. This isn’t the first time I’ve run away.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Billy can hear the heartbreak in Steve’s voice and closes his eyes. “I couldn’t say goodbye to you,” he says.

Steve breaths slow. “Isn’t this a goodbye?” he asks.

“Yeah. I think.”

And Steve has never admitted it, hasn’t even given Billy a hint, but when Steve says, “I love you,” Billy knows it’s true. He’s left the last good thing he had in Hawkins, and he’d never even claimed it as his.

“I can’t.”

“Billy–”

“I’ll call.”

“Billy, that’s not–”

“Baby,” Billy says, name new on his tongue. “Someday I’ll tell you. I’ll let you find me.”

With a shaky breath, Steve says, “I’ll wait.”


	13. (i'll be your gravity) you be my oxygen

Just like every other small town, Hawkins has one of those fortune shops tucked into a house along main street, the kind where a woman in her fifties runs her hands over some cards and tells paranoid housewives whether or not their husbands are unfaithful. Steve would never go on his own, thinks it’s completely bullshit, but Carol has always thought they were  _hilarious_ , and Steve has never had much sway when Tommy and Carol think something is a good idea.

When Steve hands over ten bucks to a woman in a moth-eaten, psychedelic blouse and sits at her coffee table, he’s sure he’s never lit money on fire so easily before.

The woman murmurs things under her breath, fans cards over the table, waves her hands in the air like she’s summoning Elvis. She asks Steve about his friends, his school, his parents. She looks him in the eye and tells him he’ll fall in love with a beauty with a strong attitude, who is smart, who will fight to hell and back, who will have tender scars and blue eyes.

When Steve kisses Nancy the first time, he knows it’s Nancy, knows it’s her until her heart starts to weaver and Jonathan can’t meet Steve’s gaze. 

Steve isn’t surprised. Fortunes are garbage. He was just throwing away money. If the fortune teller had seen something worthwhile, she’d have told him to get the fuck out of Hawkins, to take the party and run. She’d have found a way to shut down Hawkins lab before it could even grow roots.

When Steve sees Billy step out of the Camaro the first time, he thinks maybe the fortune teller could have warned him there’d be a huge asshole moving in to town. Somehow, that seems more relevant than vague statements about beauty and blue eyes.

When Steve is sore and tired after basketball practice, chest aching from Nancy’s bullshit, he catches a scar along Billy’s arm as Billy leans in close to turn off the water, sees the jagged edges of Billy’s smile. Billy licks his teeth and leans in close and Steve knows. Steve hears promises of a love who fights like hell, catches the dry laugh caught in Billy’s chest, and believes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Follow You" by Bring Me The Horizon.


	14. let's be alone together (we could stay young forever)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added for Faraheim who believes in me more than I believe in myself for this one. You're a babe.

Steve isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to do with Billy’s hot mouth gasping against his teeth, or Billy’s hands pressed under his shirt, but he came to this football game to watch Tommy give himself a concussion while Carol threw popcorn at freshmen and now he’s on the grass under the bleachers while people stomp and shout above him, loose skittles and dirt raining down as Billy presses him in to the earth.

It rained today so Steve’s back is soaked, or maybe it’s sweat, he thinks some of it might be sweat when he tugs at the wet curls sticking to Billy’s neck. He wonders if Carol is looking for them. Billy had waved towards the parking lot and said he wanted Steve to come for a smoke, and honestly, at the time, Steve was thinking he  _could_  go for a smoke, but that’s not what this is, and when Billy tugged on Steve’s arm when they ducked around the field and threw Steve on the grass Billy already smelled like cheap menthols and Fireball.

The spice in Billy’s mouth is the Fireball, but so is the sourness, mixed with the popcorn he had stolen from Carol. Steve kisses back because he’s not sure what else he should be doing, stuck on his back, legs hugging Billy’s sides like this is fine and negotiated when it isn’t.

Steve had said, “What the fuck?” And Billy had shrugged, like that explained enough. It didn’t. None of this is enough.

“Jesus, Hargrove,” Steve whines, craning his head back as far as he can so Billy can mouth at his neck. “Can I help you or something?”

“Yeah, take off your pants.”

Steve shoves his shoulder. “That’s not what I mean.”

Billy just laughs, damp breath coating Steve’s neck and lingering in his ear. “Then what do you mean,  _sweetheart_?”

“This? The grass? Fucking- any of it? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Billy slowly leans forward until he can look Steve in the face, his muscles practically creaking as he rolls his shoulders and his hips. He cups Steve’s jaw with one hand a little too hard and smiles like cinnamon and sharp whiskey as he says, “I found your sweater in my car and thought you might let me?”

Which is fucking stupid, Steve knows, feels it in his bones as he raises his eyebrows and says, “You know that means fuck all, right?”

“Yeah,” Billy nips, “But you let me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Alone Together" by Fall Out Boy.


	15. let the devil inside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this one comes from an anonymous tumblr user who gave it to me as a prompt. I feel a little blessed by their kindness.

Billy doesn’t mean to lose control, seriously, it’s not his plan. He’s been god-fearing since he was young, his mama reminding him to say his prayers and count his blessings, second guess the authority of man. He’s learned to take his father’s curses with a stiff upper lip, and his father’s knuckles with blazing eyes. He cries, because he’s only human, but he does not bend. He learns not to believe in men, or women, or God. He is his authority, and it’s a dwindling regime.

Steve has been the last kid on the playground, waiting for a babysitter while his mother was in Africa, building houses for children who had none. He’s been the last drunk at a party, loose lipped and clumsy, alone with the empty beer bottles and uncounted playing cards. 

It’s easy to be mean when you are your own family, when your heart is made of stinging things and your mother’s stale perfume. Steve lets Tommy eat his pudding at lunch because he is useful, lets Carol rest her head on his stomach when they lie in the damp grass of her backyard because the twist of her smile feels like the hook at the end of a rope.

Nancy dances at the edge of Steve’s mind like a soft-suburban dream, powder-pink and mothering, with rose-pinched lips and eyes like water. He loves her for her mind, her temper, how she fills his house with a laughter that never quite reaches the outer rooms, never seeps into his father’s study or under the basement door.

It’s easy to hate Nancy, Billy finds. She likes Madonna and boys with slow-smiles, thinks she can turn the world all by herself, but she’s  _soft_  about it, has Steve Harrington all taut around her fingers like bloodied dental floss. When she snaps the center and lets Harrington unravel, Billy thinks she’s beautiful for one moment, just long enough for him to see why she looked so good with her arms around Harrington’s neck, the crinkle in the corner of his eye all wrong.

Billy doesn’t mean to snap, but punching Harrington is so easy, so exalting. Harrington is God and man, stuck under Billy’s skin like glass from a windshield. It feels like that, like the crash, like how he imagines Harrington’s teeth would feel at midnight as they bit his jugular and mouthed over his jaw.

The first fight is not the last. Steve has been the only person left in an ER waiting room while the nurse suggests he might need stitches. He is the person who digs the sharp edge of his broken nail in to Billy’s chest when they’re alone in the shed behind the Byers’ house, Billy’s breath tight as he pulls on Steve’s bottom lip.

Billy steals shopping carts and lets them careen over the edge of the quarry because he likes the pause between those moments, the question of inevitability, and then the clatter.

Steve? Steve likes to learn whose teeth will show first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, big love to you for reading!  
> Feedback is greatly appreciated.  
> Have a great week!


	16. i feel grown up with you in your car

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to the tumblr user who sent in this title as a prompt.

Billy needs to get out of Hawkins, needs to get out of anywhere, out of the country, out of his life, away from the things that lurk in his house, twisting his insides and boiling him from the inside out. There’s never any destination when he walks to his car, keys swinging around his middle finger, cigarette dangling between his teeth. He just prays. He just drives.

Steve knows what things snap at his heels, know what he’s meant to do in Hawkins, figures it’s his job to keep monsters beaten and broken for the rest of his life. He’s not going to college. He’s not smart, and it’s not safe, and one day his mother is going to visit the supermarket and never come home because something, one of  _those things_ , got her.

So it’s not easy for Steve to walk alone at night, bat over his shoulder, feet aching from the miles he’s walked. Some nights he just keeps going until he knows he has to turn around, or until the sun is growing high in the sky again. Sometimes he forgets his bat.

It’s always the  _details._  Billy can’t remember the last time he had a direction other than forward, the last time anything other than the ashes in his chest mattered. The sun in Hawkins is cold and bleak. Damp, snowy winters chap his lips and swell his tongue.

“Jesus Christ, Harrington,” he says, one morning in late February when the sun is no more than a sliver splitting the universe, the only indicator of where the snow-soaked field and heavy skies meet.

Steve doesn’t remember walking so long, isn’t sure when his hair crusted over with thick snowflakes. He climbs into the passenger side of the Camaro and warms his hands in front of one of the vents like he was even invited, and for once, Billy doesn’t have the heart to kick him out, just grits his teeth and drives over crunching ice and gravel.

It’s a long time before Steve realizes they’re not headed to Hawkins. A long time before he says, “Are you fucking kidnapping me?”

“You think your parents will pay good ransom?”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Calm down, princess.” Billy takes a drag from his cigarette, always driving with one hand on the wheel and his chair leaned back. “We’re just getting lunch.”

The dash board reads seven-thirty-five. “In fucking Canada?”

“You got a passport?”

Steve rolls his eyes and gets his own cigarette, cracks the window just enough to clear his mind.

“We’ll find somewhere,” Billy says. “And we’ll get food. And you’ll shut your mouth, pay for me like the nice boy your mama raised, and be back for your bedtime.”

Steve rolls his shoulders and lets his eyes shut, smokes down to the filter as the earth rocks under his body, accepting the way the world feels like it’s turning on it’s side with him right in the middle. Billy’s got the music at a low hum like he wanted the silence of night, and that’s something Steve never thought Billy might savour. He’s always loud, heavy shoes, open jaws.

For one sliver of morning, it’s easy to imagine forever, easy to accept the wheels pushing them ever forward. Billy keeps his eyes on the clouds closing in ahead, promising more snow, and focuses on Steve’s low breathing in the passenger seat, catches glances at him when he sleeps.

With the heater on, frosty hair melting and drying slow, a pretty boy like him could have nothing to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "A World Alone" by Lorde.


	17. you're boujee, baby (but i love you, baby)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've realized I should probably be making summaries for these, but. Maybe someday. Here's a modern day college AU.

Having a roommate is probably the worst experience Steve Harrington has ever had in his nineteen years of existence on this planet, but after his victory lap to get his grades up and the amount of money he saved working at the ice cream shop, and his mom’s insistence that  _living on your own the first time can be hard_ , he resigned himself to living in residence instead of grabbing a bachelor apartment downtown, which would actually have been cheaper, given how fucking boujee this brand new building is.

Plus, his roommate is disgusting, one of those over ambitious frat-boy wannabees that Steve tried to emulate in high school, still tries to be two to three days a week, but somehow  _worse_ , with cologne that’s spicy and an alarming workout schedule that makes him smell like clean sweat at all hours. Steve’s not in to it, exactly, but he’s also not  _not_  in to it, and that somehow makes it worse as well, makes Billy Hargrove the worst possible pairing.

Billy is from California and acts like he thinks he’s a god, drinks like he thinks he’s a god, drinks like he thinks he could one-up Steve, like Steve doesn’t have the alcohol tolerance of a fucking elephant after spending too much time in the middle of nowhere, in a town with nothing else to do but drink and smoke weed until literally anything was interesting.

So Billy is annoying, and disgusting, and studies every second he’s not plastered, and sometimes when he  _is_ plastered, and Steve is obligated to follow him on Instagram because they live together or some shit, so Steve knows every time doesn’t come home because he’s wrapped around a different girl with a beer in his hand.

Not that Steve cares about that part. It’s more the way Billy talks about finessing ladies and flexing about stupid shit, the way he leaves his clean clothes on the floor with his dirty clothes so that they mix with Steve’s because he does the same fucking thing, the way he blasts Post Malone back to back with Judas Priest which is just  _obnoxious_.

So it’s not Steve’s fault if sometimes he gets up and stretches, body aching from working out with Billy the night before, because Billy’s muscles have him feeling flabby even though he’s never been, kind of knows he’s got great shoulders and a lean waist. If he grabs the first cap he gets his hands on and a pair of sweats without looking and doesn’t realize that nothing he’s wearing belongs to him when he’s in the cafeteria, it’s not his fault.

If some days Billy shows up for his morning eggs and bacon and eyes his own Thrasher shirt on Steve’s body, lingers too long on the bulge in his stolen sweats, it’s not Steve’s fault. Steve’s just trying to live his life, you know?

And if one day Billy is drunk when he comes home and Steve is finally fucking picking up their clothes and sorting them out, shirtless in one of his own caps and Billy’s sweats, and Billy touches his back and breathes hot in his ear, says something like,  _it’s so fucking hot when you wear those. makes my dick fucking hard,_ well. Steve maybe thought these were his. Didn’t know Billy swung this way, so it’s  _not his fault._

If he comes in those sweats with Billy’s hand gripping him, holding him up from behind, head resting sideways in Billy’s neck in a way he knows his back will hurt tomorrow, well. It’s not his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Ball For Me" By Post Malone ft. Nicki Minaj.


	18. kiss me (now, before you go)

Two weeks into the summer, Steve’s mom walks out to the patio for her evening smoke with a glass of chardonnay held between soft pink nails, to find a dead cat at the bottom of her crystalline pool. She grimaces, rubs her brow, tries not to cry when she tells her husband they need to get the pool drained and cleaned. She’s never been good with death. Steve’s never been allowed a dog because she’s too worried it would break their hearts, and Steve wishes she wasn’t right.

That’s how he ends up at the community pool the next time the sun swelters and he’s not trapped in the over-cool air conditioning at work. The kids want to swim and for once Steve isn’t their free hook-up. He packs half the kids into his car and the other half into Jonathan’s, tries not to think about the way Nancy is only going to sit on a lawn chair in her swim suit, because pools have been ruined for her after Barb, were for Steve as well for a long time.

Which is how he ends up standing in front of Billy Hargrove in nothing but swim trunks, arms crossed and brows knit. “You’re fucking kidding. They actually trust you not to drown people?”

“Yeah, Pretty Boy,” Billy smiles easy, licks his chin. “You see, I’m  _responsible_ , and bitches love a tan. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to get laid when you’re not wearing a sailor hat and clothes made for a toddler.”

“ _Bitches_  happen to love the shorts.” It’s the way his dick sways in them, he’s pretty sure. Always catches them staring, like maybe dress-up is their kink. He’s a good boy, hasn’t tried, but thinks it would be real easy to slide down the waist band and bend one of them over the side of his bed. Not that he would ever do it like that. He’s a fucking gentleman.

Billy laughs, mean, and rolls his eyes. “This town is fucking messed up, man. Girls have nothing else to do.”

And it’s mean, probably not polite to women, but Steve says, “Guess that’s why they all fall for you.”

 

The pool apparently can’t be fixed for weeks, which is how Steve ends up at the community pool again, and again, even on days when the sky is overcast and threatens rain in a way that traps all the humidity under the clouds. The ninth, tenth time Steve ends up at the community pool, the air licks him like soupy bathtub water, makes him wish he could take off a few layers of his skin.

Aside from Billy walking the edge of the pool, there’s almost no one there, just Jonathan swimming laps while Will dips his feet in the water. Nancy is sleeping on her deck chair. The other life guard, Heather, steps on to the deck around the time Steve realizes his palms are shriveled and he needs to piss. 

His sopping shorts cling to his legs as he walks into the change room, which is blessedly air conditioned. He’s washing his hands when he hears the washroom door open and shut, glances up to see Billy peeling off his trunks over at the lockers, ass firm as he bends to step out of them in a way that makes Steve flush. He trades those shorts for a pair of black ones and chucks his whistle into his gym bag.

“You staring?” Billy calls, without looking over his shoulder.

Steve freezes. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“I don’t know, Pretty Boy. Thought you were getting lots of  _bitches.”_

Steve takes a deep breath and rolls his eyes, turns back to the mirror to rinse his face in the sink. Maybe the chlorine is starting to get into his brain. He kind of wants to die.

Then there’s hand on his hips, making him start, a mouth at his ear as he keeps his eyes shut. “It’s so gross out today,” Billy says, hot against his skin, hardly a whisper.

“Yeah, keeps raining, it’s a shitty summer. There a reason you suddenly can’t keep your hands to yourself, buddy?” But Steve doesn’t move, doesn’t know why he can’t.

Billy slides his hands around Steve’s waist to place his warm palms flat against Steve’s stomach. “Told you, it’s easy to get laid here.”

“What, you queer now?”

“Not hardly.”

Steve scoffs but finds himself leaning back, nerves taut and shaking like telephone wires in wind, pulsing with electricity and missed calls. The water from his trunks must be making Billy’s wet. Billy doesn’t seem to mind.

“The weather’s been real weird.”

“Yeah.”

“Even in summer this place is shit.”

“You’re telling me?” Steve turns in Billy’s arms to meet his eyes, his own arms crossed over his chest and his lower back pressed into the sink. Billy’s eyes are so clear, so damp.

“Yeah, nothing like California heat, and Hawkins girls are messy.”

“I thought you’d like that.”

Billy scrunches his nose. “Not in this weather.”

Steve doesn’t know why he says it, it just lurches from his mouth the second rain starts to spatter against the small windows above the mirrors. “I don’t like thunderstorms. Hate being alone in them.”

“Shit, I was going to swim.”

“Maybe it’ll pass?”

“Maybe.”

But Billy’s not pulling away, makes Steve’s chest tight the way the air outside does, the way the dark clouds have his skin crackling. He hasn’t liked loud noises since the first time Nancy shot a gun by his ear, the first time his bat cracked against the Demogorgon’s flank. He can’t sleep with thunder rolling in the sky.

“Shouldn’t Heather be closing the pool?”

“Yeah, I gotta go make sure she does.” Billy doesn’t move, not until he’s sucked Steve’s bottom lip. “I love a good storm.”

From the look in Billy’s eyes, the new danger, Steve knows he does. “You’re fucked up.”

“And you want me out of these shorts.”

Steve groans, thinks about a plate being broken over his head as thunder cracks, and realizes all this means he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song is "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey.


	19. each day and each night a memory (take care and please don't forget me)

Steve let his head rest against the couch cushion, his spot on the floor seemingly softer with a cup of white wine in hand, forehead bumping Billy’s knee. “You really leaving at the end of the summer?”

He watched as Billy tipped his head back to catch the bead of wine at the bottom of his glass, watched Billy’s tongue slide over his lips. “Yeah,” Billy said. Simple.

The sun fell through the living room window like soft rain, had Steve feeling fresh and drowsy. Lost without having moved, without ever having a map. He took a sip from his glass and wished they’d found something better to drink. His parents had to be hiding more than a three week old bottle of wine at the back of their fridge, but they found it first. Drinking it was the easy option. Simple.

“Thought you couldn’t pay to go to school.”

“I can’t.”

“Thought you were going to get a job.”

Billy tipped forward until his curls hung over Steve’s head, bracketed them in dirty gold. There were drops of white wine in Billy’s mustache like sap running down a tree, crystal balls. “I am going to get a job.”

“You could get a job anywhere. You could get a job here,” Steve said, but knew his tongue was honey-drunk, soaked and sloppy.

The way Billy traced him with his eyes said more than Billy’s split lip or the sunburn cresting his nose. Billy finished leaning to set his empty glass on the table, sat back and stretched out his legs. “I  _could_ , but there’s nothing here, man. At least Chicago has bars. LA has beaches. Hell, the next town over has a  _Walmart_ , which is fucking wild, compared to here.”

And Steve choked, thought Billy could hear him say  _but they don't have me_ , even with the rim of his glass pressed so tightly against his lip it hurt.

“I think you should get out, too,” Billy went on. “You got what, here? Dead ends? Girls like Nancy Wheeler? You could have more.”

Steve laughed, a wet, soppy thing, pressed his mouth against the denim of Billy’s knee. “And do what? Work at a gas station? Marry some girl just like Nancy, but in another town?”

Billy ran his hand through Steve’s hair and licked his lips. Simple. “Yeah, something like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the song for this one is "Losing Teeth" by Neck Deep, and the whole verse is 
> 
> Passed out in the living room  
> Moved on but I'll see you soon,  
> Bored now you're absent,  
> Back home there's still nothing to do  
> Though we complained about it  
> All was such a worthwhile waste of my time,  
> Each day and each night a memory,  
> Take care and please don't forget me
> 
> But I feel like it's kind of echoing Steve feeling like Billy is going to leave him here, and he's trying to make peace with that, _but_. We know our boy Billy is totally going to make Steve move and 80s marry him, so.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! And lemme know what you think.


	20. playing through the in-flight radio

“But what about the dog?”

“You keep the fucking dog,” Billy had said, had slammed the apartment door like he hadn’t been the one to paint it green, couldn’t hear Sandy whine as water still clung to Steve’s eyelashes from the shower.

“She’s your dog!” Steve had screamed, like he hadn’t bought her a stuffed rabbit the day Billy brought her home, the rabbit just a soft brown floppy thing that they both refused to name.

“You always fucking do this,” Steve had said, like he wasn’t the one who always kept a bag packed under their bed, in case  _he was_   _bullshit this was bullshit theywerebullshit_.

They had moved to Chicago with two thousand dollars and maybe the vague sense that they wouldn’t starve if they bought a one bedroom in the bad side of town.

Steve still thinks about Billy’s breath on his neck those first winter nights, before the landlord got the heat fixed to their unit, when all they could hear were passing cars and their right-side neighbors fighting in angry Spanish. Maybe they hadn’t been angry. Maybe everything just sounded harsh when it was spit fast, half-garbled. He’d choked too many things through tears.

But Billy isn’t mad because of the neighbors or the door or Sandy, and Steve knows it as he sits on their bed and thinks about the way Billy had said to keep her, like maybe she was never negotiable, even though Billy brushed her every morning, kissed her cheeks while he rubbed her belly.

Steve just sits, and smokes, and knows he shouldn’t have asked about their mail, why Billy had gotten an invitation to a funeral in Pasadena. How he even knows anyone in Pasadena, anymore.

“It’s none of your business,” Billy had said.

“I’m your boyfriend,” Steve had said. And that was something else they didn’t say, because the world wasn’t kind or nice, and because Billy’s nostrils had flared.

He had said, “I’m leaving,” and Steve thinks maybe he should have been more surprised when Billy filled a bag and went for the front door, but all he felt was that old tug in his gut, the one that went with his bag sitting under the bed, the one that had him grabbing on to Sandy’s fur so hard it must have hurt.

So Steve isn’t expecting to hear keys in the lock, or for Sandy to go bounding to the door, or for Billy to say, “I forgot my fucking lighter.” Because they both know lighters can be bought in any corner store, and Steve’s not as stupid as he thinks Billy knows he is.

“Oh, it’s here,” Steve says, out of body, and holds it in the air.

Billy takes it from him and turns it in his fingers a long time. “They didn’t have any flights until tomorrow.”

“Oh. Shitty.”

“Yeah.” Billy nods towards the mail on his desk, the desk he bought with his first paycheck from the construction company. He’s mostly an accountant, does the books.

“Lillian Marlo,” Billy says, slowly, eyes on the lighter. “Was my mother.”

“Is your mother?”

“Shut up. Do you want to meet her, or what?”

And Steve thinks that maybe getting up and hugging Billy would be more graceful if Billy wasn’t close to tears and Steve’s eyes weren’t wet, but Billy folds into Steve like a soggy paper bird and all Steve can say is, “Sandy is too big to go on an airplane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Bruised" by Jack's Mannequin.


	21. the saints can't help me now

Icicles look like glass teeth in the early Hawkins sunlight, leafless tree branches heavy and dripping as the earth warms. Billy sucks on his tongue and leans against the hood of his car, no warmer than he’d been the night before when the moon was high and the forest was filled with open mouths that split and curled in four-leafed lips.

The thing is, he likes fighting the things that go bump in the night, finds a particular joy in the crunch of their bones when he swings his axe into their sides like they’re the trees he chopped as a child, left alone in the woods for a week under the guise of camping while his parents drove two towns over to make out in their 1970 Pontiac Firebird.

He spends different time in the forest now, sleeping in a luxury tent with Harrington, Wheeler, and Byers sprawled in the surrounding sleeping bags, badly washed clothes covered in bloodstains hanging from the tent polls to dry. At least, it’s luxury to him, has two rooms and a space for a picnic table in the front, a real grill out front where Byers makes toast and eggs every morning of their wintertime trips to protect the forest.

Then on Mondays, Billy sits in the school parking lot and thinks, waits for the bell to ring, wonders how his life turned upside down. And that’s the joke of it. Upside Down.

Harrington brings him coffee for his cold hands and they drink in silence, watch students trickle in, sleepy and laughing, and remembers that feeling, knows he’ll be that way until the weekend, when he puts on his hat and mitts and accepts the frost.

“You wanna fuck?” Billy asks, eyes following the tree branches. They sort of look like veins.

Steve chokes on his coffee, needs a second to splutter. “What? What the fuck? Why?”

Billy shrugs. “Just seems like the thing to do. Keep each other warm.” But he thinks about Steve with blood on his cheek, the hot breath of a beast melting the ice on his eyelashes as spittle hangs from it’s jowls.

“Do you know,” Steve says, slow. “That I’m in love with you?”

Billy sips his coffee, knows Steve likes to sleep as close to him as he can get, sleeping bags zipped together when it’s too cold, nose in Billy’s neck. He knows Steve sometimes wakes up half hard and goes for a walk in the woods alone, even though they all know the danger that promises. It shakes Billy’s lungs a little, makes him sick. Nancy always frowns like she’s got something to say but knows it’s not her place.

“So we’re gonna fuck?” Billy asks, instead. Not sure instead of what.

Steve sighs and shuffles where he leans against the hood of the car, looks at the gray-brown slush under his boots. “I guess.”

It’s not like anyone else would understand the way Steve woke up gasping sometimes, clinging to Billy like a leach, heart rocketing so fast Billy could feel it through their chests. It’s not like anyone else would understand the crunch of a good fight, or how it felt to wash inky blood from their hair.

The bell rings and Billy sighs, kicks off from his car. “I’ll come by tonight,” he says, like they’re booking an appointment.

“Bring your axe,” Steve recommends. Like maybe he’ll need it.

And the snow falls so soft, icicles crashing down from trees in the wind. “Thanks for the coffee,” Billy says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like, I don't know?  
> Thank you to everyone who has read these, I feel really blessed.  
> The title song for this one is "Howl" by Florence + the Machine.


End file.
